Kadar Kardeef was a solemnly devout man; before battle he prayed to the Creator for the blood of the enemy, and after, for the souls of the men he had killed. That day he was said to have prayed for the soul of King Gregory. The Imperial Order was suddenly the new rule in Tanimura. The people celebrated in the streets for days.
Over the course of three thousand years, the Sisters, from their home at the Palace of the Prophets in Tanimura, had seen governments come and go.
For the most part, the Sisters, led by their prelate, considered matters of rule a petty foolishness best ignored. They believed in a higher calling.
The Sisters believed they would remain at the Palace of the Prophets, undisturbed in their work, long after the Order had vanished into the dust of history. Revolutions had many times come and gone. This one, though, caught them up.
Kadar Kardeef had been nearly twenty years younger, then-a handsome conqueror riding into the city. Many of the Sisters were fascinated by the man. Nicci never was. But he was fascinated by her.
Emperor Jagang, of course, did not send such invaluable men as Commander Kardeef out to pacify conquered lands. He had entrusted Kardeef with a much more important task: guarding his valuable property-Nicci.
Nicci turned her attention away from Kadar Kardeef and back to the people.
She settled her gaze on the man who had spoken before. "We cannot allow anyone to shirk their responsibility to others and to our new beginning."
"Please, Mistress. . We have nothing-"
"Disregard of our cause is treasonous."
He thought better of disagreeing with that pronouncement.
"You don't seem to understand that this man behind me wants you to see that the Imperial Order is resolute in their devotion to their cause-if you don't do your duty. I know you have heard the stories, but this man wants you to experience the grim reality. Imagining it is never quite the same.
Never quite as gruesome."
She stared at the man, waiting for his answer. He licked his weather-cracked lips, "We just need some more time…. Our crops are doing well. When the harvest comes in. . we could contribute our fair share toward the struggle for. . for. ."
"The new beginning."
"Yes, Mistress," he said, bobbing his head, "the new beginning." When his gaze returned to the dirt at his feet, she moved on down the line.
Her purpose was not really to collect, but to cow.
The time had come.
A girl gazing up at her snagged Nicci to a stop, distracting her from what she had intended. The girl's big, dark eyes sparkled with innocent wonder. Everything was new to her, and she was eager to see it all. In her dark eyes shone that rare, fragile, and most perishable of qualities: a guileless view of life that had yet to be touched by pain or loss or evil.
Nicci cupped the girl's chin, staring into the depths of those thirsting eyes.
One of Nicci's earliest memories was of her mother standing over her like this, holding her chin, looking down at her. Nicci's mother was gifted, too. She said that', the gift was a curse, and a test. It was a curse because it gave her abilities others didn't have, and it was a test to see if she would wrongly exert that superiority. Nicci's mother almost never used her gift. Servants handled the work; she spent most of her time nested among her clutch of friends, devoting herself to higher pursuits.
"Dear Creator, but Nicci's father is a monster," she would complain as she wrung her hands. Some of her friends would murmur their sympathy. "Why must he burden me so! I fear his eternal soul is beyond hope or prayer." The other women would ask in grim agreement.
Her mother's eyes were the same dull brown as a cockroach's back. To Nicci's mind, they were set too close together. Her mouth, too, was narrow, as if fixed is — . place by her perpetual disapproval. While Nicci never really thought of her mother as homely, neither did she consider her beautiful, although her friends regularly reassured her that she most surely was.
Nicci's mother said beauty was a curse to a caring woman and a blessing only to whores.
Puzzled by her mother's displeasure of her father, Nicci had finally asked why had done.
"Nicci," her mother had said, cupping Nicci's small chin that day.
Nicci eagerly awaited her mother's words. "You have beautiful eyes, but you do not yet see with.them. All people are miserable wretches, that is the lot of man. Do you have any idea how it hurts those without all your advantages to see your beautiful face? That, is all you bring to others: insufferable pain. The Creator brought you into the world 1 for no reason but to ease the misery of others, and here you bring only hurt." Ha mother's friends, sipping tea, nodded, whispering to one another their sorrowful b ` firm agreement.
That was when Nicci had first learned that she bore the indelible stain of so shadowy, nameless, unconfessed evil.
Nicci gazed into the rare face looking up at her. Today this girl's dark eyes would see things they could not yet imagine. Those big eyes eagerly watched without seeing. She could not possibly understand what was to come, or why.
What kind of life could she have?
It would be for the best, this way.
The time had come.
CHAPTER 8
Before she could begin, Nicci saw something that ignited her indignation. She whirled to a nearby woman.
"Where is there a washtub?"
Surprised by the question, the woman pointed a trembling finger toward a two story building not far off. "There, Mistress. In the yard behind the pottery shop are laundry tubs where we were washing clothes."
Nicci seized the woman by her throat. "Get me a pair of scissors. Bring them to me there." The woman stared in wide-eyed fright. Nicci shoved her.
"Now! Or would you prefer to die on the spot?"
Nicci yanked free a well-worn, reserve studded strap bunched with several others and secured over Commander Kardeef's shoulder. He made no effort to stop her, but as she gathered up the strap, he seized her upper arm in his powerful grip.
"You had better be planning on drowning this little brat-or maybe cutting off hunks of her hide and then stabbing out her eyes." His breath smelled of onion and ale. He smirked. "In fact, you start in on her, and while she's screaming and begging for her life, I'll begin separating out some young men, or perhaps I'll select some women to be an example. Which would you prefer, this time?"
Nicci turned her glare down at his fingers on her arm. He removed them as he growled a warning.